


Tabulations

by Queue



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Threesome, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:44:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone wants to be known.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tabulations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aerye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerye/gifts).



I.  
Ray just needs somebody to say it. At this point, he doesn’t care who. 

Used to be he really wanted it to be Benny. When the three of them first got together, he and Kowalski had way too much in common on the outside—job, ex-wife, last name, _first_ name, Jesus—and Ray worried about that a lot on some level he didn’t even admit to himself existed. Seemed like on that level, he was always scared that Benny couldn’t tell the difference between them, that he’d hooked up with them both—let them both into his bed and his life and his huge fucking heart—thinking they were somehow the same person. 

One Ray, under Benny … yeah.

That Benny didn’t really mean it when he told Ray that he wanted him—that he loved _him_. That he meant Kowalski instead and only. And that when he, what? woke up? came down from the drugs? took off the blinders? realized whose cock that really was in his hand or his mouth or his ass? when he _whatevered_ , he’d ditch Ray in a hot minute and cleave only unto Kowalski. 

Yeah. Stupid, now Ray looks back on it. Benny has his dim-bulb moments—fewer than the average bear, granted, and for sure not as many as Kowalski or, hey, Ray himself, but even the Mountie’s guilty of occasional idiocy. But not this. Never this. If Ray’s honest with himself, which he generally tries to be, he can’t remember any time ever when Benny’s looked at him and seen Kowalski—or the Bookman, or Raimundo, or anyone’s son or brother or uncle or boss, or even (maybe especially) a Divorced Gay Cop™.

Benny’s only ever seen him—and loved him—for _him_.

And to be fair, which Ray again generally tries to be, the same can truthfully be said of Kowalski. Who, after all, knew better back then than anyone except Ray himself that, surface similarities (and same taste in women) be damned, they were as different in most ways as two closeted working-class Chicago cops could be and not kill each other. 

Not that they didn’t come close to that some days, especially (but not only) before they and Benny started … fucking, would be one way to put it, but much as Ray loves that part, it’s never been the only thing going on. Sleeping with each other? Actually, no—Kowalski kicks, Fraser snores, and Ray likes his sleep too much to put up with that much disruption. Hanging out? Talk about a meaningless phrase for anyone over the age of twelve. Shacking up? Inaccurate, plus, just, no. Taking Their Partnership to the Next Level? 

Jesus fucking Christ, some days there just are not the words. 

Before they started _being whatever they are_ , with each other and with Benny and for … Well, for what Ray personally feels is at this point a statistically improbable amount of time, what with the amount of not-gay-friendly in each of their backgrounds and all of their professions and at least two of their religions and some of their families (though not everybody, which has been a pleasant surprise), plus the fact that they were all past the age of easy changes when they started this thing up and none of them has exactly been rolling back the clock since then.

But they didn’t. Kill each other, that is. They _did_ love each other. Did and do, which Ray knows in part because that, again surprisingly, is something that it turns out none of them has a tough time saying out loud to the others. 

Sure, they’re not casual or—what’s Benny call it?— _profligate_ with it, like one of Frannie’s stepkids Ray overheard talking to her mom the other day on the phone: “Okay. Love you. Okay. Tuesday. Okay. Love you. B minus. Bananas. Love you,” so the word’s just another meaningless conversational placeholder. They don’t toss it around like it’s nothing, like it doesn’t fucking matter. But they don’t not say it to each other until Hallmark announces a special occasion or bad shit happens, either. They find a balance for it. They say it when it needs to be said.

They’ve learned to do that with most things. 

Not that they’re done with saying the hard stuff out loud. That looks to be a lifelong process, at least from where Ray stands. Never mind that Benny and Kowalski could both gab for the US Olympic Talking Team—Benny because he knows something about everything and gets a charge out of sharing the fruits of that brain, Kowalski because he’s gotta do something with that mouth besides get himself into trouble and most of the other possibilities he reserves for Ray and Benny. Never mind that Ray himself is no slouch in the conversation department as and when necessary. 

When it comes to the deep and difficult shit? Well. They’re men and cops and complicated. And like everybody else in the world, they’ve all three of them got their hidden places, those mud-mired rocks nobody wants to shine their own light under in case what’s living there frightens off the people that matter most. The fact that, a lot of times, one person’s scary stuff turns out to look a lot like the next guy’s doesn’t make that any easier. Benny likes to say the three of them are more than the sum of their parts, and mostly Ray experiences this as a very good thing. Excellent, even. Occasionally, though, what it means is that, say, Ray’s lonely and Benny’s lonely and Kowalski’s lonely sync up just exactly wrong, and suddenly everyone’s on a razor’s edge and all the air’s gone out of the room.

Not that that’s ever happened or anything. This is all just purely fucking hypothetical.

Which is why Ray isn’t real jazzed about the fact that, even after all this time together and everything they’ve been through, there’s still a piece of him that isn’t totally sure they’re not at some point just going to leave him. 

Because that right there is his personal big bad lonely. Not fear of never finding anyone. Not fear of living a life alone. Fear of finding, and living with, and then _losing_. 

And although the three of them have said a lot to one another over the years—love you, fuck off, trust me, understood, oh god right there yes _yes_ YES—that’s one promise no one’s ever actually made out loud. Ray included, but then part of this particular big bad is that the idea of saying it first is just…yeah, no. So he’s been waiting on one of them to raise it—Kowalski or Benny, either one, doesn’t matter. Because once it’s out in the open they’ll all three talk it out like they always do. And because, although for a while at the beginning the heart stuff, for Ray, was mostly about Benny and Kowalski was more a bonus than anything else, life together has changed things so much that now Ray can’t imagine doing without either of them, heart or head or otherwise. 

Doesn’t want to, either.

Too bad for him that nobody else is bringing it up. Probably the others think it’s just _understood_ between the three of them that this, what they have, is the proverbial it. That’s Ray’s take, certainly, and he’s about ninety-eight percent sure it is for both of them also. But there’s still that nagging two percent, which these days is just enough to keep Ray up at night later than is really desirable unless he has, ahem, company. 

Looks like he’s just going to have to put on his big-boy briefs and make himself ask for what he needs to hear.

*****

II.  
You try to give them everything.

Not everything they want, though that temptation looms as large now as it did in the first days of this dance. But adults can be spoiled just as children can; examples abound in this day and age, their prevalence troubling to someone for whom hedonism is as learned as it is loved, as distrusted as it is desired. And what the three of you have built here matters too much to risk spoliation.

So. Not everything they want, no. But everything they _need_. Even when they do not themselves know precisely what that is. 

Because usually, you do. You watch, and you listen, and you track what they warm to and what they reject until you’re living out a litany of caretaking, offering what they need as—or even before—those needs arise. 

An ear. An explanation. Advice. Instruction. A straight man—often that, then as now, and somehow that joke has not yet gotten old. 

An evening to vent. A morning run. The Bulls-patterned fleece blanket under the Hudson’s Bay. Zingerman’s caraway rye bread, eaten every day for a week’s worth of lunches during the conference in Ann Arbor last year, mail-ordered to arrive in Chicago just before the start of a difficult trial.

Strong hugs, with sex not central but vivid on the periphery: one hand sliding far enough below the beltline to make the point; a bite, swift and sharp, on the nape; extra pressure just prior to release. Hard kisses, almost angry, in the shadow of the El near the new after-work bar. A single, slow, sweet, dirty meeting of mouths in the front seat of a car too small, really, for grown men to move in.

Another finger, or two—or four. Tongue, just there, just so. A harder thrust, and harder still—and then a long pause, all the way in and shaking with the need to move. Restraint. Restraints. One fading bruise, just below where the blue silk dress shirt’s collar curves around the neck. 

Honor. Respect. Intention. Trust. Challenge. Honesty. 

Always willingly. Always volitionally. And always out of love.

Love, you have come to believe, shows its depths and its power most clearly in that effort of understanding—in the work put in to notice and to _see_ , to learn how to care for and how to take care of those who hold your heart, and to put that learning into practice.

Now, with your praxis not perfect but, at least, a well-established habit, you find you want something in return: to be certain that they notice you as you do them—that the ways in which each of them meets your needs, separately and together, reflect the same deliberate, painstaking comprehension of the heart as that which you bring to bear. 

No. Not want. You _need_ this certitude, this evidence that you are valued, cared for, known. 

Loved.

And, identifying that need in yourself, you see at once the seemingly impossible contradiction it imposes. For, absent unwarranted intuition on the part of one partner or both, what you now know you need can be learned only if you ask for it. 

And to ask the question is to render it moot.

*****

III.  
If I gotta pick, my favorite way is between them.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s a long damn list. And not getting any fewer things on it, either, even though we been doing this whatever-the-fuck thing we do (whatever-the-fuck fucking, har de har, I crack myself up sometimes) for a ridiculous number of years at this point. 

Yes, we do have an actual list—you have _met_ Fraser, right? Mr. Plan All The Things? And yes, we do try to check shit off of it every once in a while, being as how that’s what Listboy over there says you’re supposed to do with lists once you make them. Which to me would be an argument for not making them in the first place, and this is one of those rare times where Vecchio and me are on the same page without either of us bitching about it first. As usual, however, Fraser’s reading a totally different chapter, and since he’s in charge of this book club … yeah, y’know what, I’m gonna leave that one right there before I hurt myself, thanks. 

Anyway. To be honest, it’s kind of an awesome list. You gotta love something that just reading it makes you hard even on the bad days. We got the classics covered—face up, daisy chain, morning sex, sixty-nine, and so on. (I call our take on that last one six sixty-six, just to hear Fraser _tch_ at me and see Vecchio cross himself.) But also we got our own individual ideas on there of what we like and what we need and what we’d like to try, our own personal private stuff we each of us need from this on the physical front. Example: you wouldn’t know it to look at him—or at least Vecchio and I wouldn’t’ve, before—but Fraser has a thing for public sex like you would not _believe_. I figure that’s to do with proof he’s wanted, though he’s never said so—like if we’ll fuck him in an alley, Vecchio right up against his back giving it to him up the ass and me on my knees in front blowing him to kingdom come, that must mean we really do think he’s hotter than the sun and we’re not just lying to get laid. 

Which we’ve both told him in so many words, like, roughly eight million times, together and one on one. But Fraser … well: for a guy who seems on the surface to be all about the words, the man has got a serious need for physical reassurance in some bone-deep areas, I tell you what. 

So this list, as you might imagine, has always included a good many whatsit, scenarios in which one or both of us makes Fraser come like crazy somewhere that ain’t exactly private. Supply closet: check. Changing room at the gym: check. Alleys, plural: check, check, checkety _check_. 

And yet it seems like every time we go to mark something off the list, either one of us decides we didn’t do it quite perfect and we need to practice (one guess who usually goes that route) or one of us thinks of something else to add or one of us figures that whatever it was we did worked so good it should stay on the list forever.

Or all of the above. All of the above happens more often than not, really. Meaning not much ever gets, like, _struck off_ the damn list. Which tends to make the stuff towards the bottom of it not happen all that often, if at all.

Now I get to talking about it, it occurs to me that this whole thing makes it sound like instead of being all over _The Joy of Gay Sex_ or _The Gay Kama Sutra_ or _101 Gay Sex Secrets Revealed_ (let’s just say Fraser’s Amazon wishlist is a thing of beauty and a joy to behold and leave it at that), we’re more about, like, a gay Franklin Planner. (What? Stella used the hell out of that shit, which made Christmas together easy—every year a special fucking ruler or a pack of graph paper with too many holes in it or whatever, one trip to some office-supply place and bam, done.) 

Which not so much, I promise you. Me and Fraser and Vecchio, we may do the list thing (Fraser) and the book thing (Fraser again, shockingly) and even sometimes the diagram thing (principally Vecchio, go know). But mostly, we are men of action. As in, we all like to get a little of it.

Or, y’know, a lot.

And that takes me back to where I started all this, thank God: with my favorite way to do it. Which, for anybody who got lost a while back (and really, talk about totally understandable), is between Vecchio and Fraser.

Because Christ, and not to put too fine a point on it? I really, _really_ like to get fucked.

To be clear, I got no issues with switching it up in that department. Fraser or Vecchio needs me to fuck them, I am down with that. It’s Switchhitters R Us over here in Kowalski’s Korner, and that happens often enough to keep everybody happy. Matter of fact, I wind up on the pitcher’s mound most of the time, regardless of which one of them is catching. (Sometimes both of them, if I’m worked up good and somebody blew me before work that morning, just to take the edge off.) 

But it’s funny, that, all things considering.

Because if I could have what I want most when the three of us are in bed together, it’d be this: one of them up my ass as far as he can possibly go, just pounding the hell out of my sweet spot, and the other one fucking my face.

Turns my crank so hard, I can’t even tell you. 

Enough that sometimes I _dream_ about it. No preliminaries in these particular dreams, in which apparently I am a stereotypical no-foreplay kind of guy (for the record, not always the case when I’m awake): no undressing, no kissing, no slow sweet anything. In these dreams, I’m already naked, on my hands and knees on the bed trying to keep myself upright while Vecchio (it’s always Vecchio in the dreams) stretches me out with those amazing fucking fingers, giving me one and then making me beg for two and three, getting me to push back onto his hand and smacking my ass if I don’t make enough noise or don’t ask nice enough for his twisted sense of what’s appropriate in this particular situation. That always makes Fraser—did I mention Fraser’s at the head of the bed in these dreams, back propped against the headboard, feet up and legs spread, watching me and Vecchio and working his own cock hard as he does? because oh, God, yeah, that is a show right there. And dream!Fraser, he gets off on _my_ show, on the noises I make as Vecchio finger-fucks me past ready and into desperate—and he _really_ loves it when Vecchio shoves his cock into my ass and then just purely fucks the living hell out of me. So much that after a few minutes of that, of me groaning as Vecchio plows my ass, the Fraser in these dreams I’m talking about here grabs my hair with one hand and uses the other one to feed his cock into my open mouth, so that now I’m groaning around him, and then cups the back of my head in the other hand and starts pistoning in and out of my mouth, going all the way into my throat on every thrust. And as I shake apart with pleasure, filled and fucked at both ends, I can hear Fraser and Vecchio kissing above me, the kind of kiss where they’re more moaning into each other’s mouths than actually kissing because it all feels so good that it’s impossible to concentrate on anything else …

Yeah. Phew. Okay. Shake it out, Ray.

And y’know, now I’ve been talking about this for a while, it occurs to me that there is something fucked up going on here. Given how much time we’ve spent together at this point, not to mention the book discussions (think you’ve got a woody that won’t quit? try listening to Fraser and Vecchio discuss the comparative merits of _Bend Over!_ and _Blow Me!_ —in the middle of Gibsons, no less) and the diagrams (turns out making a decent sex sling out of Home Depot parts ain’t as easy as it seems) and the fighting and the fucking and the whatever else, you’d think by now they’d _know_.

Wouldn’t you?

They’d know that’s what I want—what I _need_ —without my having to actually fucking say it. 

Wouldn’t they?

Well, I’ll tell you what _I_ know, now that I’ve talked through all this. What _I_ know is this: it is way past time for me to shift a few key things up to the top of that goddamned list.


End file.
